Today’s Comic: “Different Kind of Activist”

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They must continue to sell through a butt-ton of FPS’s set in the WWII universe, because despite the fact that I really don’t want to play anymore of them, they just keep pumping them out. COD5, stuff from EA, a bunch of C listers too…they just keep coming. Well, I say no more.

Mhmm I agree 100%… but games like COD4 are popular, so they will keep making them, thats pretty much the end of story. Unless people start realising, “hey if I dont want to play world war shooters I should stop buying them…”

Agreed 100%. I was soooo happy with CoD4. I was sure they would build off its success with another modern combat game, or even a future combat game maybe. Wow was I ever disappointed to see them going back in time.

Actually makes me wonder, as some people have theorized before, if the near omnipresence of these WWII games is somehow subconsciously reducing a very real and very horrible war to the level of mere entertainment in the minds of many people.

The way it’s been abused it really is a fictional setting.
How many times did kill those Germans already ?
How many times did we visit *that* beach ?
And it’s always been the same old locations as well …

There’s just one problem … no matter how bad the games are there’s obviously people out there willing to pay for them.

The problem is probably that, mechanically, it makes the most sense. The weapons are still kind of balanced (no stand off missles etc like today), the opposition evenly matched, and intriguing to the masses, or at least more so than the alternatives.

Further, the genre has a clear-cut enemy, where it could be argued that other wars since have been hazier in terms of objective.

Would you go buy a Korea shooter? How would Korea or China react to it?

Would you buy another Vietnam shooter? We lost, so it is less popular.

Desert storm / shield / Iraqi freedom? Hazy goals or not, it is still way too fresh in our minds… Plus, like a WW1 shooter, it has too many ‘final’ possibilities outside of a players’ control. You would get pissed at a game where you are defending a trench and suddenly the game says “gas attack. You are dead, because your mask wasn’t made right.”

Likewise, how do you script a IED in an Iraq game? Boom. You died.

Older wars haven’t been tried, but to be realistic, it would either be one volley and then bayonets, or some kind of complicated reloading ritual. Others, well they would be pretty non-pc, such as cowboys and indians. Others, even further back, it was really a team effort, and the AI or online play isn’t well built for it. A game based on ‘300’ the movie, for example, would be great if they could do it right, but the AI to make a shield wall or a phalanx would be challenging. Also, they then look more like combat games than shooters.

Maybe steampunk has some mileage left in it? Or maybe a land-based game in the realm of crimson skies? I agree its been beaten to death, but I don’t wonder its because of a lack of other ideas.

totally agree.i really hate them by now.i remember back in 1997\1998 (but also some years later)there were a lof of inventive and original fps,Blood,Shadow warrior,Duke nukem etc.also beteween 2001\2002\2003 game like Alien vs predator,,Redline etc.go to a gaming site,any site,and scroll the list of fps ,made since 2005 or so until now…i dare you to find a game which is not “call of medal of duty of honor” in the title….

Scott, you owe it to yourself to check out Company of Heroes. I am sure that you have heard a bit about it. But if you are looking to Starcraft II, and seemed to really like Sins of a Solar Empire, you may love Relic’s World War RTS. It is like Dawn of War 2.0, and really well done.

Are you getting tired of the same ole’ run-around (no pun intended) just with a different coat of paint on it?

Then, it’s time for folks to start thinking of new ways of co-op play or the older audience is going to start stopping. We’ve had the same thing for nearly fifteen years with a tweak here or there but still the same thing, essentially. Sure. We have a longer attention-span, but even we get bored.

I think it’s high time to start throwing crazy ideas out there and gambling on what’s going to be the next DOOM. However, stakes will be high, and that’s why nobody’s willing to try it. Not to mention that younger players don’t want to learn to play a new style… risking getting pwned in a system they’re not used to playing.

I have always thought that video games based on a war as recent as WW2 are incredibly disrespectful. As long as there are veterans of the war alive, it is too soon to make a game about it. Dress people up in that style, but make it a fictional universe, don’t recreate battles that people who are still living fought in. I am not saying that the games should not be made, I am not a fan of censorship, but I wish they weren’t so popular.

You gotta attempt to eiplaxn why concealed carry and more guns in the hands of law abiding citizens isn’t good. Check out the the item I shared a little earlier from John Lott. There’s actually quite a bit of research and data to back up the points made in : • The best available empirical evidence shows that concealed-carry laws reduce the incidence of mass public shootings.• Mass public shootings occur almost exclusively in places – like universities – where concealed carry is proscribed.• There are numerous examples of firearms owners acting to disarm would-be mass murderers, thereby saving lives.• Concealed-handgun-permit holders are overwhelmingly law-abiding individuals. The research is available in John Lott’s books if you’d like to borrow them.And I’d also like to mention the sheriff’s are about to launch tear gas into one of the condos close to ours to flush a guy out. They’ve been talking over the loudspeaker for a couple hours telling him to come out with hands up.

Agreed. And really, if they MUST do another WW2 shooter, why not change up the perspective a bit? Why not something with a bit more depth, like from the eyes of an Aboriginal soldier with his backstory or … from the German/Japanese side? I’d honestly play that game if they made it serious enough. Think ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’, the video game!

I’d just be happy with a good WWII MMO (not the current WW2 Online). COD or MOH series have gotten pretty stale (which is why COD4 is modern), and I would like to see them take all the various components of these games and re-focus on making one game and then just updating and expanding. Start with Europe, add North Africa, and then Pacific. And potentially save Naval and Air Force components for later as well as the world expands.

The thing is that the combination of dynamic combat (WW1 was all trenches and mass bitzes of men into machine gun fire) and a clear diliniation between Good and Evil (Nazis = Bad) WW2 will most likely be the defacto fall back setting of most War FPS. I will say though I’m surprised that no one has tried to make a fame based on something like the French resistance. It could be a bit of Grand the3ft Auto action as you try to survive make the right conections flush out the traitors and make it to D-Day when you join in the fight to defeet the germans.

A revolutionary war shooter would be interesting in theory, but remember that the weapons of the time were sabers and flintlocks.

You don’t have any uber weapons to give the kids to keep their interest. It could be an amazing shooter / fighter experience, but it may not sell well, which is the whole motive these days, unfortunately.

Also, the british campaign would pale in interest to the american campaign because the brits still stood in lines. americans were fighting ‘indian style’ or, rather, using guerilla tactics.

Another interesting idea (maybe) would be what if…
What if you had a submachine gun in the revolutionary war, or even the civil war? How would it have changed? Of course the problem is it could go the way of an Uwe Boll film in a hurry, and just exactly how much ammo would you be able to carry? You couldn’t have chests of ammo or bandeliers just laying about out of context.

It is a tough one. I guess if the perfect idea was here, we’d be rich.

*ahem* phalanxes are possible … they just haven’t been tried in a fps.
There’s Total War-series (with the upcoming ‘Empire’ for the 17th-century warfare).
And there’s arcade games like Dynasty Warriors and the more recent ‘Bladestorm’ that the Japanese appear to be fan of.

There’s definitely something to be said about the ‘balance’ and such in WW 2, but IMHO that is a balance that was created in the game and one that need not be relevant for the real hardware.

btw : WW 1 was not a complete trench-war at the very start it was literally a race between both sides to try and find a weak spot in the defenses. There are plenty of equally interesting battles, but the problem is that most people are unaware of these things as the media have painted this image of an extremely static/boring/horrible war. Just like WW 2 isn’t America vs Germany … WW 1 is far more than French/English vs Germany.

Games like GRAW proof that it is possible to create a good game in a (fictional) modern settig without having to worry about missiles and artillery. The latter was also available in WW 2, but most WW 2 games conveniently ‘forget’ that …

Is TW:Empire a FPS though? All the TW titles thus far are more of a RTS type game with great formations. I think if one could get the AI right to do a First Person perspective and a viable phalanx, it would be epic.

My point on ‘older era’ gunpowder games is that a whole game mechanic would need to be created to handle the tedious reloading process that was in place. Granted, bolt action weapons are emulated in most shooter genres, but flintlocks and other things would be tougher.

I grant you the WW1 pre-trench stuff would be interesting, but then short of the uniforms would it not be similar enough to the WW2 stuff? I would think you could probably take a decent ww2 title and make a mod for it and have a ww1 game.

It will be interesting to see where FPS goes in the future, that is for sure. I just hope it doesn’t do what air combat sims did and just vanish.

With epic franchises like Halo and Halflife, it seems unlikely, but then Jane’s and EA were the mega franchise of flight sims and poof… almost nothing now.

Maybe the FPS is going to continue to go to the online realm? Most MMORPGs are FP combat games.

I love WWII games, mostly because I find it’s an interesting conflict in history, and makes for good game play. Certainly some games water down the meaning, impact and horrors of the war, but most games are guilty of that. I’m not a huge fan of FPSs, but I have enjoyed the BF1942, MoH, and CoD series. Company of Heroes has been been my recent WWII favorite. I just got the expansion a few days ago.

However, I would like to see more exploration of other areas of the war. 75% of the games seem to focus on the European conflict, mostly from an American perspective. I think there’s lots of open territory to explore in many different genres, like the naval battles in the pacific, island battles in the pacific, tank battles in north africa, air war in burma, and the list goes on.

Even though it’s still a little ways off, I give props to Activision for setting the next CoD installment in the eastern and pacific fronts of WWII.

I agree with you Scott. WWII has been done to death as far as video games go. I wish more films would focus on this time period. I am so freaking dissapointed that the next Call of Duty game will take place during WWII. I wish game developers would look at other wars – hell, even WWI!

Hi RockJohnAxe,That’s definitely a pobsisility that they’re intrigued by our art and creativity. But, from what abductees seem to report, it seems like there is a lot more going on than that. It sounds like they’re doing a large project involving breeding alien/human hybrids and training certain humans for very particular things like for natural disasters or nuclear wars (events that the aliens may know are going to happen in the near or hopefully distant future). Maybe they’re breeding with humans to regain some of that creativity and those emotions (but not all of it!!) in the hybrids. i feel like I sound crazy when talking about this stuff, but all of this is based on watching many documentaries and reading a lot on this subject. I’m reading a book right now written by a psychotherapist who specifically works with people who feel like they may have been abducted. He uses hypnosis with these people and their stories and experiences are remarkable.